New Open Access agreement with Springer Nature from 15 July

From 15 July researchers at Stockholm University can publish open access without any charges in more than 500 journals from Springer Nature. In a new pilot agreement signed by the national Bibsam consortium and Springer Nature, the costs are equally shared by research funding organisations and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).

– The cooperation between funders and universities is an important step towards the goal of 100 percent open access for publicly funded research, says Wilhelm Widmark, Library Director at Stockholm University and vice Chair of the Bibsam consortium’s steering committee.

The agreement is the first of its kind, and is in line with the National Library’s recommendation that the costs of open access publications should be shared between research funding organisations and HEIs. The recommendation originates from one of the studies on open access by the National Library that was handed over to the government this spring.

The research funding organisations Swedish Research Council, Formas, Forte and Vinnova are paying 50 percent of the costs, and the other 50 percent are payed for by the 31 HEIs involved in the agreement, where Stockholm University is one of them.

The agreement covers more than 500 full open access journals from BioMed Central, SpringerOpen, Nature Research and Palgrave Macmillan. For the individual researcher, this means that you can publish open access in these journals completely free of charge during the period July 2019 - December 2021.

– The cost of publishing in these OA journals are already paid for today, but this is one way of getting a better overview of the expenditures and reduce the researchers’ administration. The agreement implicates cost efficiency for the entire consortium, says Wilhelm Widmark.